


Advent: Legend

by FyrMaiden



Series: Klaine Advent 2015 [12]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:39:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5411987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt inspired by the Dragon Rider who visits his school to try to create better armour for them. When it's his husband in the saddle, he knows he has to perfect it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent: Legend

Kurt has a flashback, the day that Blaine - his husband, and co-parent to their daughter - puts on the suit. It’s the result of a lifetime’s work, and if it works, it will seal both of their names in posterity. In his more unsure moments, Kurt thinks it’ll seal their names in history either way. He’s either about to kill his husband for the sake of vanity, or he’s going to change the lives of every man and woman serving in the Fire Force. With Blaine standing before him, proudly wearing his new uniform - tighter than his old one, and more practical - all Kurt can think about is the Rider who visited his school when he was 15. 

-

Kurt doesn’t remember all of the details now, almost twenty-five years later. He remembers it more in impressions. The Rider had been a woman, her hair red and shoulder length, probably only fifteen years older than he was at the time, though she’d seemed impossibly old. She’d been dressed in the bulky uniform of the Force, and though Kurt’s classmates had been interested in the dragons themselves, full of questions about what it was like to work with them, what went into their care, Kurt had been full of different questions. The Rider passed her gloves around for everyone to touch, to try on. Kurt had run his hands over them, stroked down the fingers and back up the inside of them, and caught his fingers on scales sharp enough to pierce skin. He’d yelped, and picked the glove up to examine it more closely.

“What are they made of?” he asked, and the Rider had looked him over for a second, her eyes large and sincere, before answering.

“Dragonhide,” she’d answered eventually. “The gloves are made from the softest parts we can utilise, because they have to fit our hands. But, as you can see, mostly we’re using tougher skin and it’s harder to mould.” 

Kurt had asked if he could see it closer, and she’d invited him up to sit beside her. She’d shrugged out of her jacket, leaving herself in her undershirt and the bulky pants, held up with suspenders over her shoulders. Laying the jacket on the desk, she’d gone over the tailoring with him, and allowed him to touch, to try to bend the scales. Like armour plating, the scales of the skin barely shifted.

“Why are you still using this?” he’d asked, and she smiled at him, tilting her head like a bird. Like one of the dragons she worked with. As if she was appraising him, to see if he could take the answer she had for him.

“Because dragonhide is the only thing we have that they don’t incinerate,” she’d said eventually, and Kurt had felt his breath catch.

“But they’re tame?” he’d said softly, and she smiled and nodded.

“So are lions in a zoo,” she’d replied. “But they still have claws. Dragons may be tame, but we can’t stop them breathing fire. Accidents happen.” 

He’d thought about his mother then, and the work she had done. She’d been in veterinary care, and all Kurt knows for certain is that she died after an accident at the hatchery. He thought, with the Rider’s kind eyes watching him, about all the things his father and his aunt hadn’t told him, and about how very hard it seemed to be for the Rider in his classroom to move in the dragonhide uniform, and he’d wondered if would be possible, in his lifetime, to design something more fitted that would still keep the riders safe.

-

As Kurt grew up, the thought he’d had as a teenager stayed with him. He made it the focus of his thesis in college, and had several workable prototypes when he graduated. At 21, he married Blaine Anderson, a fellow student, with a face ready made to be the public face of the Force he was preparing to join. Blaine was a year younger than he was, and had dedicated his academic career to dragon care. He told Kurt upfront about his plans, and Kurt surprised himself by not thinking twice before asking him if he’d be willing to work with him, once he had the knowledge, to help him understand the specifics of what the riders needed in their uniforms. To understand what it was about the way that the plates lay that makes them impervious to the flame. Whether it would even be possible to simulate their make up with synthetics. 

No one was more surprised than he was when Blaine agreed.

By the time they’ve been married for a decade, they’ve been to more than a dozen funerals. Blaine explains that the uniforms are hot, they don’t move, and in the summer heat, riders don’t tend to wear them, or they don’t wear them properly at least. “Accidents happen,” he says. He doesn’t sound happy, but there’s nothing to be done. Kurt doubles down. He knows he can save lives, he just needs to work harder.

When Kurt has his first workable prototype, the first that has stopped flame in any meaningful way, he and Blaine celebrate with a meal and a real conversation about the future of their little pod family. They both agree that it would be nice to have a child, and perhaps a dog. The dog happens first, if only because it’s easier. They start the process of finding a surrogate, though. She’s pregnant when the prototypes start rigorous testing; full suits on test dummies, up against real dragons. Their daughter is months old the first time one of the dummies comes back only singed.

She is almost 7 years old when Blaine puts the first full suit on. It’s not ready for the dragons, but Kurt wants to see how he moves in it. Maddie claps her hands excitedly and declares that it’s perfect. Blaine grins and runs his fingers through her hair, which she insists on keeping short. She says it will fit better under her helmet when she’s a Rider. The thought still makes Kurt nervous, but it’s double the reason to get the suits right. He can save both of them, his whole family, in a way that no one could when it was his mom - 

He breathes deeply when Blaine declares that the suit definitely moves better, and lets Blaine kiss the worry from his mouth and then, later, his skin.

When Maddie is 8, Kurt and Blaine decide the suit is ready for human testing. If - when - Blaine survives the test, Kurt has a suit for her as well. If this works, he will gift it to her for her birthday, so that she can go to the hatchery with Blaine, to work with him when she’s able. When Blaine survives, they will have changed the world between them. He knows that this is a sure thing. He hasn’t lost a dummy in a year, but this is his husband now. It’s terrifying, even with a young dragon, not at full power, for the testing.

Blaine walks away from the dragon without a scratch, despite being caught by the beast as he’s unsaddling it. Not even a hair is out of place, bar those displaced by his helmet as he removes it. Kurt throws himself into his arms and kisses him square on the mouth, public be damned. 

No one is more relieved than he is to see them to into production, except perhaps his daughter, who is even more excited to be able to join her dad at his work.


End file.
